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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/48171
License name: CC BY-SA 4.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/48171
License name: CC BY-SA 4.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

I agree with Mark Baker, and Chris Sunami. It sounds like a scam.

We have an equivalent thing in Academia, unfortunately it IS common for scientific journals to charge authors for publication, and there are some out there (junk journals) that will take **anything** , including complete gibberish (that has been tested multiple times), they will publish it online, charge the author, and the author can link to it as a "publication."

That is why we have to rank journals.

In non-academic fiction and non-fiction, never pay a publisher. Never pay an agent, either. I strongly recommend you GET an agent, but not one that charges you anything up front. They work on commission, or they aren't an agent!

(You can pay for editors and other professional reviewers, but shop around and see what the prevailing rate is and what they promise to do.)

You should even check any publisher that makes you an offer, find out what they actually have published and how well it did. As far as keeping their promise to publish online and in paperback: Sure, they can meet that contract and keep their scam legal: It is just that they will create a print-on-demand minimum quality paperback with a free clip art black-and-white cover, and print exactly as many paperbacks as they need to send to authors. They won't go to the expense and effort of actually trying to sell them to bookstores.

Because the scammers accept **anything** and they know their book is full of crap that no store is going to allow on their shelves. The fee you paid them is also paying for the books you get.

Original score: 9